Berlin: Michael Pena to Star in Action Thriller 'The Worker'

Michael Pena will star in The Worker, a Taken-meets-Bourne action project to be directed by Dan Bradley, one of the biggest names in the action movie game.

Content Media will be introducing the project at Berlin’s European Film Market, handling worldwide sales. CAA is repping domestic rights.

The project tells of a Mexican special ops agent (Pena) working to take down the drug cartels who is forced to leave the country and enter a protection program in Los Angeles with his family. He works as a day laborer content with the knowledge that his wife and son are safe. But the cartels have long arms and when his wife and son are kidnapped, his unique set of skills come in handy as he seeks revenge.

Jeremy Renner and Don Handfield are producing via their banner, The Combine (Kill the Messenger). Content’s Tom Butterfield also will produce.

Pena, who was last seen in The Martian, recently wrapped CHiPS, Warners big-screen take on the 1970s TV series in which he plays police officer Poncharello. He is also starring in John Michael McDonagh's War on Everyone, which is having its world premiere in the Berlin Film Festival's Panorama section later this month. He is repped by CAA.

Bradley worked on second unit for three of the Bourne movies and has credits ranging from Spider-Man 2 & 3 to Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol to the upcoming crime thriller Triple 9.

His stunt work stretches all the way back to the mid-1980s when he worked on flicks such as The Re-Animator and Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. He worked with Spike Jonze on Being John Malkovich and Adaptation and also designed the action for the Bourne and Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies.

Bradley, who is repped by WME, made his directorial debut with the 2012 remake of Red Dawn.

Content is behind the just-announced documentary on Manolo Blahnik, Manolo (The boy who made shoes for lizards), and is working on a Maria Callas biopic titled Callas, starring Noomi Rapace with Niki Caro directing.